While reading Trúng Số Độc Đắc (Winning the Lottery), a classic novel by the great late Vũ Trọng Phụng, I encountered so many use of Vietnamese proverbs. One of my favorites is “Con giun xéo mãi cũng quằn” (Even a worm will turn). I collected them for my literary leisure and created a sample page. Typeset in Loes, designed by Dương Trần.

Donnytruong.com gets a new set of types. Instead just using one sans-serif typeface, I wanted to combine several typefaces to give my portfolio a bit more flavor. For the large heading, I chose Gimlet Banner. For subheadings and user interface elements, I chose Gimlet Sans. For body copy, I wanted to return to a serif face; therefore, I chose Warbler Text. All three typefaces designed by David Jonathan Ross and they are from his excellent Font of the Month Club.

I republished selected projects I worked on during my time at George Washington School of Business. Good old memories. I am glad that I had kept many of them for posterity.

I launched a tiny website for Global Wealth Management in our WordPress Multisite network. I republished the case study for Le Mekong Cuisine even though I no longer worked on the website. I also republished the case study for I Love Ngọc Lan.

The purpose of a portfolio is to showcase your best work. For me, I want to keep an archive of all the designs I have done. Maybe I’ll trim it down when I need to find a job, but I’m not looking at the moment. I still have a few more projects I would like to republish.

In the last few days, I recollected screenshots of designs I had worked on during my time at Vassar (from 2002 to 2008). For posterity, check out homepage banners, homepage redesigns, and site designs. They brought back so much memories.

Reading Vietnamese children folk tales reminds me of my childhood in Việt Nam. My personal favorites included Lưu Bình-Dương Lễ and Sơn Tinh-Thủy Tinh. I was glad to see these stories translated into English. I created this sample page hoping my kids will read these folk tales to learn about their root. I selected Skolar and Skolar Sans, by Rosetta Type, for the reading text. I chose Nickel Gothic for the cover title and Map Roman for the story titles. Both typefaces designed by David Jonathan Ross. Check out Cổ tích nhi đồng.

Over at donnytruong.com, I added a big typographic footer to give people a quick way to contact me. They don’t have to hunt around for me email anymore.

Over at simplexpression, I changed the logo once again. The wordmark is set in all lowercase to give it a simple style. I chose Pomfret, designed by David Jonathan Ross, because of its elegance. I like the simple, elegant, expression.

Because my wife has been so busy, she hasn’t had the time to devote to her passion project. We haven’t sold anything in a while. I want to see if I can use other platforms like Facebook Marketplace or Amazon to make some sales. I need get her inventory together before I kick off the experimentation. I did OK with selling used skis and snowboards on Marketplace. I want to see if I can also sell other things.

I have been playing around with YouTube Shorts and starting to get into the creative process. I love the ability to mashup my videos with my favorite songs. Some of my silly shorts are hitting 2.5k to 3.5k. I want to try to create a short a day for the next 30 days or so to see how it goes. If you are interested in following along, check out my shorts on YouTube.

SLS is a network of Scalia Law sites powered by WordPress Multisite. When I led the law school digital experience, I saw the need to provide anyone from the law school community to have a web presence. From centers to institutes to students to faculty to administrators, they need to have their websites separated from the law school main site so they can update and maintain themselves. As a longtime WordPress user, I knew Multisite was the solution. I installed the software, architected the domains (URL), designed the themes, and launched the network in 2017. I trained developers, content strategists, and directors of communications to create and maintain their own sites. As more sites came on board, we needed to migrate the network to WP Engine to handle the scaling. The Scalia Law networking is hosting over 40 sites.

On the previous homepage of my portfolio site, I wrote an intro text that read:

I’m a creative director who brings decades of design expertise, technical experience, and collaborative energy to the teams.

I set the font weight to extra heavy, which didn’t look too good small screens. I wanted to remove it, but I had nothing else in place. Then I read Robin Rendle’s recent redesign. He writes:

The goal here was to merge the about and index pages into one since they’re always the same thing anyways and this now saves you a click if you want to learn about me.

Duh! Why didn’t I think of that? I moved the about page to the homepage and set the word “Chào!” (Hello!) really big. Why not include a Vietnamese word? It was a small change, but it made me happier.

Over the weekend, I tweaked the “Tục ca” sample page a bit. I reset the type to Cormorant, designed Christian Thalmann. I really liked the upright style of Cormorant for poetry.

I also turned the “Trịnh Công Sơn” sample page into hide-and-show function. Since the page has so many songs, it is easier to scroll to the title of the songs in alphabetical order without showing all the lyrics.